I'm also rather mystified by the encoding in 14. 5 is a normal clue. HECK doesn't decode to anything but nonsense, and it doesn't need decoding anyway, since Chambers gives the necessary meaning for it.
I'm also stumped by the wordplay to 30. I'm not sure whether the elements that make up the answer are letter lengths of 4,3,2 or 7,2, and I'm not sure which spelling of the word is clued. I'm inclined to go with the Chambers preferred spelling since then I can understand Betty and Ted, but not Tory. Another reason I've settled for the preferred spelling is that it completes the grid in a particular way that I would expect from this setter.